Archive for the Uncategorized Category

Tune in to a new episode of The Living Earth Connection on Sunday, July 30 at 9:30 a.m. PST on http://www.kmud.org. In this episode I present selected essays from Exuberant Animal: The Power of Health, Play and Joyful Movement by Frank Forencich. Frank is an author and movement educator who examines health and fitness through the lens of our evolutionary heritage.

Drawing on our biological history, our evolutionary heritage, when examining our lives and experience, helps us to counter delusional and damaging cultural mythology. For instance, accepting the fact that we are animals, runs counter to the foundational cultural belief that we are a superior life form, who is meant to rule the world as we see fit.

Learning how to live as just one member of the Community of Life, once again, necessitates embracing ourselves as animals.

In order to fully appreciate the biological world we belong to, this Great Mystery we call Life, we need to be fully alive ourselves. Living beings detect the livingness in the world around them. The meaning of Life, it’s sacredness, is something that we feel.

Fully experiencing the vitality of Life through our bodies is a sacred act.

Please tune in for a new episode of The Living Earth Connection this Sunday, April 30 at 9:30 a.m. PST on kmud. In this episode I present a wordless meditation through instrumental music.

At the root of the ecological crisis, lies our cultural belief that we are the rulers of the world. We believe that humans are superior to, and quite separate from the rest of the community of life. Rather than knowing that we belong to the community of life, we think the world belongs to us, as resources to be used however we wish.

Related to this inaccurate and destructive belief, is our cultural belief in the supremacy of words and logic. We rank other modes of being and communication as inferior or unimportant. This bolsters our sense of superiority and separation from the community of life. However, language and logic are but one aspect of our capacities, with limited usefulness. We dismiss our full capacities to our peril. We do better when we remember that we are bodies, we are animals, with senses developed to navigate the world. Reconnecting to our wordless selves is a powerful experience.

In this episode we reconnect to our wordless selves through instrumental music. Music is an inexplicable urge that predates language in human experience, and we share this urge with other animals.

John Hardin composed LEC’s wordless meditation, off the grid, in his solar powered studio, using a collection of instruments he mostly built himself from recycled materials and found objects. To learn more about John’s music, and see pictures of the instruments, go to www.electricearthmusic.wordpress.com. Go to www.kmud.org to hear this episode live or archived under Sunday Spiritual Perspectives.

What are we to make of a culture that does not provide good health for most of its members? While the traditional diets of indigenous cultures provided their members with robust good health, our culture has spawned three multi-billion dollar industries centered around poor health. The food industry creates foods that lead to ill health, while the health care and the pharmaceutical industry, at best, treat the symptoms of illness. In all our talk about health care, what gets overlooked is our need for health.

Listen to The Living Earth Connection to hear a deconstruction of the myth that saturated fat and cholesterol cause heart disease. I present selections from Eat Fat, Lose Fat by Dr. Mary Enig and Sally Fallon. Dr. Mary Enig was an international expert on the biochemistry of food and fat. Sally Fallon is the president of the Weston A. Price Foundation. Weston A. Price studied and documented the health of indigenous peoples who followed their traditional diets, in the early 20th century. Tune in to http://www.kmud.org on Sunday, January 29 at 9:30 a.m. PST.

Before European contact, California was home to an abundance of large animals, including some of the largest grizzly bears in North America. For an exploration of the ecological wealth of Old California, tune in to The Living Earth Connection on Sunday, May 29 at 9:30 a.m. PST on http://www.kmud.org. Host Amy Gustin presents selections from AState of Change: Forgotten Landscapes of California by ecological historian and artist Laura Cunningham. The destruction of ecosystem abundance by totalitarian agriculture is well documented in the history of California. Taking stock of what was lost helps us put our current situation in perspective. Be sure to check out the book for yourself. Laura beautifully reconstructs forgotten landscapes in her paintings as well as prose.

In the next episode of The Living Earth Connection I present a reading of The Book of the Damned by Daniel Quinn. Written a decade before Ishmael, The Book of the Damned powerfully conveys Daniel Quinn’s ideas and insights. In it he draws our attention to two different stories about the world, and man’s place in it. “What difference does a story make? It makes a difference. Because the story we have, we are enacting. We are making it come true.” One story represents man’s destiny, while the other leads to extinction. Please tune in on Sunday, May 31 at 9:30 a.m. to http://www.kmud.org or 91.1 FM to hear The Book of the Damned.

In this show we explore the amazing diversity of the animal kingdom, the role top carnivores play in protecting biological diversity, habitat needs of animals, relationship between habitat size and extinction, and the relationship between agriculture and the extinction crisis. The adaptations and habitat needs of caribou, wolves and cougars are featured.

In the vast outpouring of creativity known as life on earth, animals display more diversity than any other class of organism. For a celebration of the diversity of the animal kingdom, tune in on Sunday, March 29 at 9:30 a.m. PST to http://www.kmud.org. We will explore some of the conditions and relationships that promote this diversity, including the special importance of top carnivores in ecosystems. We will also explore the fundamental need of all animals for sufficient habitat, and ask what island biogeography tells us about habitat size and extinction. We will also explore the relationship between agriculture and the extinction crisis.